Upregulation of a marine fungal biosynthetic gene cluster by an endobacterial symbiont.

ABSTRACT: Fungal-bacterial associations are present in nature, playing important roles in ecological, evolutionary and medicinal processes. Here we report a fungus-bacterial symbiont from marine sediment. The bacterium lives inside the fungal mycelium yet is robust enough to survive independent of its host; the independently grown bacterium can infect the fungal host in vitro and continue to grow progenitively. The bacterial symbiont modulates the fungal host to biosynthesize a polyketide antimicrobial, spiromarmycin. Spiromarmycin appears to endow upon the symbiont pair a protective/defensive means of warding off competitor organisms, be they prokaryotic or eukaryotic microorganisms. Genomic analyses revealed the spiromarmycin biosynthetic machinery to be encoded, not by the bacterium, but rather t

SUBMITTER: Shao M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7511336 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature